How accurate are cheap hotshoe bubble levels?

Question

It's been suggested to get a hot-shoe bubble level for use with a ballhead tripod, when the camera doesn't offer a digital level (and the tripod head doesn't have its own).

Name brand levels, like this one from Manfrotto, cost over $30. In fact, even brands I haven't heard of cost that much. But generic models cost under $10 — Adorama's "house brand" is $6! Although that's just a single bubble, I've seen double-bubble levels for low prices in local stores.

Do I get better quality for the money? Am I just paying for the brand? If I save the $20, am I getting a deal, or am I actually wasting $10 on a level that isn't likely to actually be level?

Asked by mattdm

Answer

Expensive bubble levels are quite accurate and display an independent level for each axis. While the cost is certainly low to manufacture, there is a higher cost to getting consistent quality control.

The accuracy of cheap bubble levels is not very accurate. They sometimes do not even have the bubbles parallel to the base of the hot-shoe! It seems like such a simple thing to make.

My daughter loves the bubbles so she used to take mine which I have 4 expensive ones for historical reasons (Dotline, Kaiser and 2 Jobu - which is a famous brand BTW), so I bought a lot of 10 for a ridiculous price for my daughter. She loves playing with them but none of them are correctly aligned on more than one axis.

The point is that those things - just like the levels inside cameras - have to be incredibly accurate otherwise they are useless. It is not good enough for them to be close because close can be done by eye. Without a level I get shots within 0.5° of accuracy. Any level less accurate than that is dead weight. The one on my Pentax K-7 and the Canon 7D were accurate to about 0.25° (although the specs on the 7D say otherwise) while I turned off the one on my K-5 because it was less accurate (about 0.75°).

Answered by Itai

Check more discussion of this question.